Reading Maryse Conde's Theatre

Four of Maryse Condé’s dramatic texts are discussed here: Dieu nous l’a donné (1972), Mort d’Oluwémi d’Ajumako (1973), Pension Les Alizés (1988), and An Tan Révolisyion (c. 1991). ¹ Condé’s first play, Le Morne de Massabielle [The Hill of Massabielle], was created in 1970 by the Théâtre des Hauts de Seine of Puteaux (near Paris) and directed by Gabriel Garcia. It has been reworked and produced in English (Richard Philcox’s translation) by the New York Ubu Repertory Theatre in 1991. Its soulful title refers to a hill in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, also evoked in Pension Les Alizés. The plot of The Hill of Massabielle explores the existential crisis of an educated young man and his attempts at finding solutions to the economic and cultural alienation which saddle his country (Interview Notes). It may therefore be considered a forerunner of Dieu nous l’a donné. Condé’s latest play, Comédie d’amour, was written as a canvas for improvisation by the Bakanal troupe and created in Pointe-à-Pitre in April 1993 (Interview Notes). It was also performed at the French Embassy in November 1993, as well as in New York. These two plays, not currently available in print, have not been included in this study.

It is easy to distinguish the first two texts under scrutiny from the other two. Dieu nous l’a donné and Mort d’Oluwémi d’Ajumako represent Condé’s most engagé and full-fledged efforts to use the dramatic form in order to engage the broadest possible audience by means of unmediated oral communication. In the late 1960s, says Condé, “I thought drama was the best form through which to address the people” (Interview Notes). Her youthful interest in the dramatic form came to fruition largely because she was married to a Guinean actor of the Griots troupe in Paris. Mamadou Condé had played the role of Archibald in Roger Blin’s landmark creation of Genet’s Les Nègres (October 1959). Some twenty years after the first plays—with several essays and novels to her record—Condé wrote Pension Les Alizés—with only two characters and a single set—for her friend Sonia Lee, actress and stage director. This play falls into the category of minimal or “poor” theatre (such as Becket’s theatre or Sartre’s Huis Clos). By contrast, the Regional Council of Guadeloupe commissioned An Tan Révolisyion to celebrate the bicentennial; Condé presumably did not have to worry about production or financial considerations. Thus, the first two plays reflect Condé’s own commitment to reach Black francophone audiences and to share her vision of the problematics of revolution and the necessity to re-evaluate and historicize tradition. But they already and decidedly constituted a feminine discourse—they asserted love values in the face of complex, often narcissistic political entanglements—a feminine vision which seems to have gone unnoticed when not misunderstood or radically misinterpreted. She conceived of the two later plays for vastly diverging reasons. However, revolution—bringing it about, conceiving of it, claiming its necessity, or surviving it—remains the fundamental concern of all four plays. In addition, this “revolution” calls for evolution in the relation between the genders. Condé poses this question more explicitly in the second, the “African” play (Mort d’Oluwémi d’Akumajo), and the third (Pension Les Alizés); but gender, and the feminine conception of the couple, were already treated in Dieu nous l’a donné, her first produced and published text for the stage.

Perhaps Dieu nous l’a donné should at first be read ignoring the foreword and preface, although they bear the respected signatures of Guy Tirolien and Lilyan Kesteloot. The former translates his admittedly impressionistic reactions to the text into a startling verdict: “the fundamental misogyny of the author.” His very own imagery, however, evokes the “islands’ destiny without grandeur—females [femelles] with their vices and warts, with their bastardly well-thinking progeny emasculated by three centuries of imposed concubinage . . .” (7). Kesteloot’s incisive, essential preface does not reflect, for obvious reasons, the confusion...